


BirdBrain

by WaltzQueen



Series: Apprenticeship [3]
Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Bloodlust, Canon-Typical Violence, Drabble, Gen, warning: exposure to this fic may result in lycanthrophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-03 00:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8689486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaltzQueen/pseuds/WaltzQueen
Summary: Eileen is a smart old woman, made of hardtack and nails. For all that she can't admit that her body is failing her. She has had many a student and many a target in her long,treacherous years as a hunter of Hunters. Before that though....she had dreams.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Apprentice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8024293) by [WaltzQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaltzQueen/pseuds/WaltzQueen). 



> Originally chapter 8 of my BloodBorne fic Apprentice before it was taken down and reworked (the story is in NG+ perhaps?)  
> This didn't have a place in the original anymore so i figured i'd put it here and see if this hook gets any nibbles. Enjoy

Eileen is a smart old woman, made of hardtack and nails. For all that she can't admit that her body is failing her. She has had many a student and many a target in her long,treacherous years as a hunter of Hunters. Before that though....she had dreams.

Long and painful dreams choked through out the night with flashes of peace and a bit of rest hidden between the eaves of weary battle. Starting off as a hunter had been all she could have hoped for in those yawning, hungry days that made up much of her youth. Camaraderie in a rough and cruel world, a sense of purpose to drive away thoughts of a family taken from her, knowing that she could help someone else live to see another day were all things that Yharnham had provided for her. And Yharnham would continue to provide these things as long as she hunted their beasts for them.

Their beasts were ferocious and unsightly, which meant hunting was a tense, cacaphonic dance of colors and sound. Even with seasoned hunters leading a group in pursuit of a single beast, the hunt was a strain on the hearts of all that performed their duty and dirtied their hands to cleanse the foul streets of the Holy City of Yharnham. Leaving the bounds of the Healing Church's Hunter Workshop with a blade in your hand was an honorable duty, Eileen supposed. After all, returning though those same doors at the end of a hunt was a blessed reprieve and wasn't it hard, esteemed work that was supposed to provide those sorts of rewards.

The most welcome reward of course, was dreaming.

The dreams began the night she had taken her oaths and had a blood transfusion. She had seen for the first time the old man that would become a face rarely seen but welcomed whenever it was. Like a herald foretelling rest and comfort in meager times, he welcomed her to the dream and bid her use whatever she needed. So she set herself among the prickling flowers and sought out the comfort of the gentle moonlight on her face only to awake in Yharnham, flat on her back. At first she stared up at the oddly decorated lamp and wondered if she had been concussed and had an odd dream.

As time went on it became clear to her that her dreams had more substance than most did. Eventually she stopped noticing when she and other hunters choked a room with the smell of moon-lit flora. She did, however, begin to notice, the way her comrades each had a weariness around their eyes, and how it sometimes morphed into madness.

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On the first day of her second year of hunting Eileen left with three companions and came back with one.

The taciturn giant of a man led their hunt through the outskirts of the city. Aldbert pulled up the rear as Japhet and Eileen fell to either side of their new cohort. They were not yet past Cathedral Ward when Japhet began to chatter quietly up at the silent newcomer.

"You!" Japhet twittered. "You're Gascoigne right?"

He grunted, and sped up his steps. It did nothing to deter Japhet.

"I've seen you around the Church Workshop, you know. Big, quiet type you are!" Japhet snickered as they all descended the steps of the outer court yards and fleet-footedly strode onto the soft, yielding earth. Eileen took a half-hearted swipe at the irreverent, chatter box with an open hand. Japhet dodged just out of range and continued their badgering.

"Where is your brightly colored friend?"

Here, Gascoigne deigned to reply, "Away." Just the one word and clipped in tone.  
Sensing that they would get no more out of him, Japhet fell back next to Aldbert and began chattering at him. Eileen quickly re-positioned herself in the center behind Gascoigne to cover for the break in formation. Japhet was terrible at keeping their mind on business before the hunt had properly begun. Japhet would probably continue to squawk at them all until they met their first beast for the night. Eileen had no doubt that once battle began Japhet would become the quick, dedicated hunter she was glad to have hunting beside her. Before that moment, however, Japhet was a very friendly nuisance.

 

The first beast of the night came and went with all the swiftness that was expected of a quartet of hunters. Each move was a cog in a masterfully crafted watch, keeping time of the night in a series of slashes, cuts, tears, blood. And so on they went until their symphony of eradication ended in a crescendo.

The beasts before had been monstrous yes, but this one was gigantic. It was a two headed...something, letting out deafening roars as it attempted to gut anyone that came close enough. Japhet and Eileen danced about the creature, swinging blades and scoring its skin as they went. Aldbert and Gascoigne took the distraction the two provided and delivered heavy blows. In the end more than one of their party had had to take blood in large doses to repair broken arms, torn flesh, and in Japhet's case a rather large stick had scraped their eye and nearly shredded the entire thing in half.

Injuries aside, they had been the victors and the first sprinklings of dawn could be seen. The night of the hunt was nearly over. But they were not as safe as they thought that they were. For while a dismemberment was called for with any beast killed, Aldbert had gone beyond that. Aldbert swung his Saw Cleaver again and again. First separating, then tearing and eventually mulching the ginormous beast into a pulp.

"Aldbert, come on," Eileen called, making to step away from the beast. He did not respond, just continued his frenzied attacks on a cooling corpse. Eileen and Japhet exchanged puzzled glances at this new strangeness. True Aldbert did not favor working with them but generally he was above pettiness like this. Japhet, agreeable and trust worthy, was the one that went to shake him from his state.

"I know you always want to show me up," Japhet laughs. "But this is-"

Japhet stops cold as Aldbert turns towards them. Eileen, too, freezes in confusion and fright. Aldbert's eyes have become something inhuman and terrible. Japhet is struck down before she can move. Eileen and Gascoigne watch as Aldbert rips into Japhet. They watch as the dream does not come to steal his body away. The dream isn't taking him. Japhet is dead.

All at once the enormity of what he had just done crashes over her like a wave. Eileen can't move because Japhet is dead and Aldbert Killed Japhet. She stares straight at Aldbert as he charges her, blade raised high.

Gascoigne rushes past her and delivers a stunning blow with the broad side of his axe. The crack of his Aldbert's body against a tree shakes her from her stunned state. Eileen is afraid. But more than that, Eileen is now vengeful. She tears into Aldbert's stunned form leaving no space for him to strike back at her. Soon enough there is no Aldbert, just like there is no more Japhet.

  
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"Did you know," she queried, sidling up to the quiet hunter at his post at the window, "that your nose flares when you hunt?"

He didn't speak a word. Just turned on his heel until his tall, burly frame faced her entirely. He peered down at her as though he had judged and found her wanting but did not offer any comment.  
"Your nose," she continued on pointedly. "It flares out at the edges, like you're sniffing them out. The beasts."

He looked; no, he stared. For a gaze like that would never be anything other than a piercing stare. He stared at her for a small eternity. thin lips pulled every so slightly down. She returned his stare two fold. It doesn't matter to her that she was an outsider and would never be welcome amongst the Blood Saints and Choir Members they are supposed to bow and supplicate themselves to. They two were hunters and Eileen is just as important as this giant of a man with a frown is.

"Aldbert did that, as well." The warning and question in that that statement are not subtle. But they were not meant to be.

It was only when his eyes refocuses that she realizes his stare was not at her, but through her. His world's-end stare snapped back to the flesh and blood being in front of him and briefly he seemed absolutely terrified. Having seen him face down monstrous creatures without a flinch, she cannot fathom what he sees that makes him so afraid. He lets his shoulders slump as if to make himself smaller. His eyes turn towards the window of the Church Hunter Tower with an aching wistfulness in them. He breathes in, heavy and intentional. His nostrils flare even more so than she had seem them flare before. He breathes out a rough chuckle.

"So they do." His expression is far from happy.

Gascoigne turns away at the sound of his name emanating from the window. Together they peer down on a place Eileen hadn't noticed before. It looks very much like the Hunters Dream. A man, garbed in yellow, is waving a single sunshine clad arm up at the window in greeting.

"I'm leaving the Healing Church." Eileen snaps her head towards him. Gascoigne still looks down at the singular man in the mist of the early dawn. His eyes are seeing something far away again and she can't help but wonder what. "Fear makes us different from them, just remember that." Any hope of her receiving an explanation for either of those statements leaves with him. He trundles out the door and she turns back to the window. Eileen watches him and the other man as they disappear into the building below. She stands and thinks, as the sun climbs over the horizon, watching the building intently until she blinks and it is gone. It's the last night she spends in the Healing Church Workshop. Eileen 's time of dreaming, she's decided, is come and gone.

The next night of the Hunt, she Hunts Hunters. Leave the saving of innocents to the hunters, for Eileen will save the Hunters from themselves.

 

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Eileen has seen Hell. It rests in other Hunters' eyes when the blood and the hunt have whisked their minds away and turned their hearts into sludge. But she sees something like a salvation when a new hunter stumbles into her path. The girl is tiny and clutching her weapon like it is her only salvation. She is right to do so. The girl wears that dreadfully silly looking ensemble that marks newcomers and outsiders. Eileen has no idea where everyone gets the same clothes, but they must get them somewhere.

"Oh, a hunter, are ya? And an outsider? What a mess you've been caught up in. And tonight, of all nights."

The new hunter, performs an peculiar bow upon eye contact. Eileen doesn't move a muscle. She just watches her come towards her and peer down over the sewers of Yharnham. It strikes Eileen as something Japhet might have done and softens her heart toward the new comer a tad. Eileen slips a hand beneath her feathers and holds out Bold Hunter Marks, inscribed on vellum with a deft hand.

"Here, to welcome the new hunter."

The outsider hunter just smiles.


End file.
